Letters

Dear Editor,
I would like to respond to Mr. Robert Visel’s editorial letter in the February 28th Monitor. Well said, ir! Your comments were concise, accurate and you hit the nail on the head. It is pathetic how our children are being raised today by parents who want to be their friends, not assuming any responsibility in their parental role. Heaven forbid they harm their child’s self esteem by telling him or her “NO” once in a while. Let them grow up with a sense of entitlement. Makes it pretty clear why so many of these nut cases feel entitled to go on to a campus and shoot it up.
And yes, we have a plethora of gun laws through out the country but what we don’t have is a judicial system that is capable of enforcing them. Look at Chicago, New York, and even Washington, D.C. They have some of the toughest gun laws in the country and also the highest crime rates in the country.
You can pass all the laws you want regarding gun control but you can’t control those nut cases that seem to be more and more common in today’s world.

Dear Editor,
The Rotary Club of Los Alamos is pleased to invite the community to its ninth annual Crab Fest, to be held Saturday, Feb. 24, at the Knights of Columbus Hall at the intersection of Trinity Drive and DP Road.

Social time with a cash bar begins at 5:30 p.m. and dinner will be served at 7 p.m.

Tony Chan will provide guitar music. Tickets for the all-you-can-eat crab and prawn family-style dinner with sides and dessert are $50 each and can be purchased at Bennett’s Fine Jewelry or by calling Skip (662-8832) or Linda (662-7950).

Proceeds this year will support the construction of a treehouse at the PEEC Nature Center and trail improvements at Camp May. The funds will also benefit local scholarships for Los Alamos High School and Los Alamos Middle School students, and international projects in Mexico, Guatemala, Nepal and Nicaragua.

Why did I don a handmade pink hat and march alongside my wife, Naishing Key, and thousands of others on a freezing day at the 2018 Women’s March in Santa Fe? Because I feel the same outrage that millions of people across the United States feel. No one, whether the president or a private citizen, should abuse women or other human beings, or treat them with disrespect.

Together we demand equality, justice, and respect. That means an end to discrimination on the basis of gender, race, age, sexual orientation or disability. These are not liberal values: these are American values, established in our Constitution.
We will never solve the many problems of our state and nation with the same old politics of division and scapegoating. We can start to solve our problems by recognizing the dignity of each and every human being.

That is why I am running, and that is how I will do my job if I’m elected as our next District 43 state representative.

Pete Sheehey
Los Alamos County Councilor,
Candidate for District 43 NM State Representative

Dear Editor,
The Los Alamos Monitor seems to run a disproportionate number of “woe the poor immigrant” editorials, gathered from national news media. The most recent was, “Leaving immigrants in legal limbo isn’t fair,” from the Boston Herald on Jan. 12.

Why never headlines that might read, “Continuing one of the highest rates of immigration in American history unfair to workers, the poor and the environment.”?

I will admit national corporate media is almost universally biased toward unfettered immigration – because they are owned by companies being enriched by unfettered immigration – and that can make for “slim pickins” for editors. But there are nonetheless reputable sources for better representation of the other side of the coin.

Let’s begin with the last paragraph of the Herald editorial.

It states, unsubstantiated, “America needs its immigrants just as much as they need a safe haven from the countries they left.” That is an example of a statement that has been blithely repeated by open-border advocates (led by media who are at least occasionally supposed to be fair, fully inclusive of all possibilities and objective) with no effort to justify or substantiate it.

On Sunday, Jan. 14, the Los Alamos Monitor published an editorial entitled “Iran deal did not pan out;” the actual title of this New York Times Editorial Board item is, “Unrest Shows the Iran Deal’s Value, Not its Danger.” The changed title affects the nature of the actual editorial. I wish to counter the implication of the Monitor’s title by advocating that the Iran Nuclear Deal, is incredibly good.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iran Nuclear Deal, is far better than I ever expected. Indeed, if followed by all parties,

It effectively blocks all possible avenues for Iran to produce a nuclear weapon.

Dear Editor,
The contrast between the two columns and one letter on the Los Alamos Monitor Sunday Editorial page was both amusing and disturbing.
As usual, John Bartlit presented an even-handed/minded analysis of the football-and-the-flag controversy, recognizing that the breadth of responses is a testament to the vitality of our democracy. My own thinking had been limited to: “Standing shows respect while kneeling shows obeisance or committed fealty – the latter choice of action doesn’t seem to match with the stated purpose for it.”
Meanwhile, Paul Gessing continued to display what appears as barely-thinking partisanship against anything Democratic despite acknowledging that it was a Democratic governor who lowered income taxes – too much for stable state funding, as subsequent events have demonstrated.
I still consider it a miracle that the State Permanent Fund maintains a legacy for indefinite generations of New Mexicans rather than being siphoned off to immediate political needs. (And by the way, doubling the gas tax would not be a tax increase – it would only restore the purchasing power of the tax to about the level of almost 30 years ago.)

Dear Editor,
Unfortunately Mr. Pete Sheehey seems to have a gross misunderstanding of the shape of LA County fiscally. We are in deep trouble running a debt twice the legal limit and on top of that at least $71 million in the red!

This is all available for anyone to read on the county website in the last audit done after the fiscal year 2016 ended. As it’s rather hard to find and it’s a rather long report mostly taken from figures the county supplied and broken down into small sections it can be tedious reading and hard to put together.

You find it by going to Los Alamos County Administrative Services, Finance and Budgets, Reports and Budgets button, Fiscal Year Reports and Budgets,

Dear Editor,
I think that the term “windfall” is not appropriate to describe the gross receipts taxes paid by LANL contractors. Merriam-Webster defines “windfall” as:

• Something (such as a tree or fruit) blown down by the wind;

• An unexpected, unearned, or sudden gain or advantage.

The term is not correct for two reasons. First, the term refers to a “one-time” event. Once all the apples are off the tree you can expect no more apples to fall. The citizens of Los Alamos should expect that LANL contractors will continue paying gross receipts taxes. Second, the term “unearned” does not apply to the taxes paid by LANL contractors. In the ‘70s, the legislature “reformed” the tax structure in New Mexico. In general, funding for basic governmental services (roads, police, fire, recreation, etc.) went from property taxes to gross receipts taxes (mostly from retail sales). In general, property taxes were to fund capital improvements.

Dear Editor,
I was surprised to read about the effort to organize a Polaris Public Charter School for sixth- to eighth-graders in Los Alamos. I am asking and, this is something I do not know, if the organizers and parents have tried working to improve Los Alamos Middle School, LAMS.
I worked for many years at the high school when Mike Johnson, the current principal at LAMS, was there. I do not think one could find a more competent, caring, hard-working administrator. I believe that he would always be interested in ideas (even radically different ones) to improve the education for our children at the middle school.
As a teacher at the high school, I was always aware that the success of Los Alamos schools was in many ways a direct result of the parental interest in education.
The parents convey this message to their children in innumerable ways and the children then come to school ready to learn because they understand it is important, even during the years when children seem not to be listening to their parents. I would love to see this considerable effort and parental interest work toward improving the middle school that all ready exists.
Julie Wangler
Los Alamos

Dear Editor,
Let’s get facts straight. Mr. Richardson recently totally changed my statements at the school board meeting and in my last letter to the editor. Please see the minutes of the School Board meeting, or better watch it on video, as well as read my letter in the Nov. 19 edition of the LA Monitor to see I fiercely defended the children.
I find it detestable that someone would deliberately use children to misrepresent in order to advance their own political agenda. This includes the school board, teachers and parents who pass resolutions stating what is already protected by federal law rather than address the repeatedly stated reason for the resolution which is bullying!
Each school board members’ comments and letter to the editor have given one reason for the need for a resolution, that Latino and Hispanic students are being repeatedly targeted for bullying by apparently white students calling them names and threatening them with deportation. Why is this bullying not being addressed? Why are our children not being taught to respect others? Why are they not disciplined or suspended for bullying?
Every child and teenager deserves to have an education AND to feel SAFE while getting it !!! I was bullied in elementary and middle school so I know first hand what it’s like.